In a technique proposed in Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. HEI11-249839 for a network system including devices (network printers, etc.) connected to a network, the user of the system connecting a new device to the network specifies a device that has already joined the network and the specified device transmits prescribed information to the new device, by which the device newly connected to the network acquires the prescribed information.
In the above conventional technique, the user has to specify the device as the sender of the prescribed information each time a new device is connected to the network, and that is troublesome to the user.
Meanwhile, it is possible to realize such transfer of prescribed information by previously specifying a device as a master device and letting the master device transmit the prescribed information to the new device each time a new device is connected to the network. By employing such a scheme, the prescribed information is expected to be transmitted from the master device to the new device on every connection of a new device to the network, without the need of specifying a device as the sender of the prescribed information every time.
However, in the above scheme previously specifying a device as the master device, there is a possibility that a new device is connected to the network while the master device is not in operation. In such cases, the prescribed information can not be supplied to the new device since the device as the sender (source) of information does not exist on the network when the new device is connected.
It is also possible to employ another scheme in which a new master device is dynamically selected from devices on the network when the original master device is not in operation. By employing such a scheme, the state with no information source device existing on the network can be eliminated.
However, a network system generally includes various types of devices from a device highly suitable as the master device to a device unsuitable as the master device, and thus there are cases where a device unsuitable as the master device is selected as the new master device. In such cases, the high performance of the devices highly suitable as the master device can not be utilized efficiently.
Incidentally, while the system in which the master device functions as the sender (source) of information and another device functions as the receiver (destination) of the information has been taken as an example in the above explanation, the scheme selecting one master device from devices existing on a network can be employed for various systems other than the above system. For example, in a system in which a master device collects information from other devices, the master device functions as the receiver of the information and the other devices function as the senders of information. Further, there are various other cases (other than such information transmission between a master device and other devices) where a master device has to be selected from devices.